Nocturnal Interludes
by lilbluedancer
Summary: Felicity naively hoped that three golden months of kisses and hotels and souvenirs would be enough to send Oliver's ghosts packing once and for all. She's wrong. Felicity hates being wrong.


**A/N: I know, I know, I'm supposed to be finishing Kill the Lights. But sometimes a girl just needs some Olicity. I haven't decided if this will be a one-shot or a multi-chap fic - that will probably depend on the response I get! So leave a review and let me know ;)**

 **I don't own Arrow or its character.**

She's aware Oliver has problems sleeping. Felicity has catalogued the signs over the past few years- the red eyes, the weariness he tries (and fails) to hide, the irritability spinning out of control when it's two AM and he's running on four hours of sleep a night.

It's one thing to know it, but it's another thing to be confronted by it in the middle of the night, to roll over and find his side of the bed empty.

Sometimes she wakes up to Oliver shirtless on the floor doing push ups. Or sitting in her armchair in the corner, reading a Harry Potter hardback because he only got through the first two books with Thea before he left on the Gambit.

Sometimes she opens sleepy eyes to see Oliver hovering over her, hard against her thigh, a haunted look in his eyes that only goes away after she's fucked him into the next morning.

She buys him melatonin, valerian root, magnesium supplements. He chuckles, kisses her cheek and puts the bottles in the cabinet next to her vitamins, where they sit unopened.

Felicity naively hoped that after officially quitting team Arrow, spending three months traversing the country together, three golden months where the worst thing that ever happened was not agreeing on where to go to dinner, that the insomnia would resolve itself, that three months of kisses and hotels and souvenirs would be enough to send Oliver's ghosts packing once and for all.

She's wrong. Felicity hates being wrong.

xxx

She wakes up to a streak of lighting illuminating her bedroom, rain lashing against the windows.

A thunderstorm.

Oliver's afraid of them. Felicity's never heard him explicitly say it, but she knows, the way she just knows things sometimes, because her brain can't help but note the way his shoulders tense when it's raining, how he twitches when he hears thunder.

She whispers Oliver's name in the dark but he doesn't respond because when she turns the lamp on he's not there.

Her apartment smells like ozone and rain, and she pads through dark rooms in bare feet to the balcony door, slightly cracked open.

Oliver's sitting on the balcony in only black boxer briefs, staring out at his city.

(His city, not hers, because if she's being honest with herself her city is Las Vegas, burning desert sun and flashing lights, lucite stripper heels and cocaine and cocktail napkins with college level mathematical formulas scribbled on them in purple pen).

His face is wet but from here she can't tell if it's from tears or rain. Maybe both.

There's a blank look in his eyes that screams of blood and nightmares and loss. Felicity wants to wrap her arms around him, lick the rain off his skin.

She doesn't, because she knows not to touch him when he's like this.

(Not that she believes he'd ever hurt her but he does and that's a fear they haven't confronted yet).

"Hey," she whispers, careful not to slip on the wet cement as she steps out on the balcony. "What're you doing out here?"

His head is bent and he looks vulnerable like this, his tanned neck exposed because his shorn hair is just starting to really grow back.

"Sara's dead," Oliver says flatly.

Felicity hates herself for being surprised, because it's not fair to Sara that the memory of her death has been eclipsed by Ra's and assassins and chemical weapons.

She risks touching her palm to his back and his skin is freezing under her touch. He flinches but doesn't pull away.

"How long have you been out here?" she whispers.

He shrugs, which she interprets as _too fucking long_ , if the way he's shivering is any indication.

"Come on," she says gently, slipping her hand underneath his arm and pulling. "It's too cold."

Oliver lets her pull him up, follows her back inside with a glazed look on his face that tells her he's totally checked out right now. He seems okay but her brain is screaming _pneumonia_ and she hustles him into the bathroom, turns the shower on hot.

He's still not talking, which is okay, because words are her thing, not his. But Oliver is a man of action so what scares her is that he's not doing _anything_ , just moving where she pulls him, lifting his feet when she tells him to so she can strip him of his boxers.

"Get in," she murmurs, pushing him towards the shower.

His hand is tight on her hip and he won't move, raindrops rolling down his body and scattering on the tile floor. He looks like a lost boy (a dangerous, gorgeous boy) and she'd never tell Oliver that it's this version of him that scares her the most.

She's not afraid that he's killed, even though she knows he is. Because Oliver would rather die than hurt her, and she knows that in her bones. She is not afraid of his hands that shoot deadly arrows, those keen senses. If anything, it's one of the things she loves the most, because it means he is a survivor.

He always survives.

What frightens Felicity is _this_ , this dead, lost look on his face, when Oliver is locked in some kind of metaphysical hell, some place where she can't follow him.

She is afraid of not being able to save him.

"Oliver, you need to warm up, you're freezing."

He blinks, looking a little dazed, and releases her. He gets in and stands under the spray, looking beautiful and haunted.

It makes Felicity want to cry.

She sits on the closed toilet seat, cheek resting on her knee, listening to him breathe in the steam. The water shuts off after a few minutes and he gets out, looking warmer but no less lost.

She grabs a towel from the rack and wraps it around his shoulders. Oliver shudders and tilts his head down so their foreheads are touching.

"I'm sorry," he says hoarsely.

She reaches up and cups his cheek, and his eyes drift shut.

"I know you are," she says softly. "It's okay."

He exhales sharply and straightens out. His eyelashes are wet and clumped together, making his blue eyes more intense than usual.

"Do you want to talk about it?" He doesn't, he never does, but she always asks anyway.

"No." He tries to give her a reassuring smile but it looks like a grimace.

He follows her back to the bedroom and gets in bed with her. He's stiff for a moment and then he just kind of collapse over her, his head buried in the crook of her neck.

"Hey, there," she murmurs, reaching around to stroke the back of his neck.

Oliver presses his mouth to her collarbone in response and she holds him tighter.

"I'm okay," he whispers, so soft, the way he talks when he knows she doesn't believe him and he's trying to reassure her.

"Okay," she whispers back, even though it's really not.

Oliver lifts himself up on his elbows so he can look down at her. "I love you so goddamn much."

She cups his cheek and he turns into her hand. "I love you too."

He shuts his eyes like he's in pain and comes down on one side to lay down beside her.

"Oliver," she says gently, instead of _it's okay, you're safe with me, talk to me, talk to me.  
_  
He grips her hip and her skin burns at his touch.

"I know," he says quietly, fingers curling around her hard enough to bruise.

She reaches down to loosen his grip and Oliver winces, pulling his hand away.

"Shit, I'm sorry, I'm sorry-"

"I'm fine." She pulls his hand back and does him one better, placing it on her ass. "You forget your own strength, Mr. Queen."

"You flatter me, Ms. Smoak," he says seriously.

Inside she's cheering because banter is a familiar thread he can follow back to her, something to remind him he's alive, he's connected, he's with her.

Oliver leans in carefully, eyes flicking from her eyes to her lips before kissing her. It's tentative, a reassurance, _you're here I'm here we're both here and this is real_.

He pulls away slowly and his eyes are glassy. Felicity runs her thumb along his cheekbone, wishing she could leech his pain away with her touch.

"Sometimes," he says, so quiet it's almost inaudible, "it scares me how much I love you."

"Oliver-"

"They all die," he mutters, turning his face in her shoulder. "All of them, they all die-"

" _No_." Felicity will not do this. She will not let Oliver's ghosts into her bedroom, into his head, poisoning their love.

She _refuses_.

She pulls his head up, forces him to look at her. "You're not dead. I'm not dead. Dig, Thea, Laurel... we're all here. Don't do this to yourself, Oliver."

He looks down at her and his eyes are swimming in pain, but there's something else brimming too. Love, adoration, the way he looks at her like she's something holy.

They fall back asleep with her palm spread over his heart, so she can feel the insistent thump of his pulse saying _I am I am I am_.

xxx

Other nights are better.

She wakes up with Oliver's head between her legs, her body warm and heavy with sleep, his big hands wrapped around her thighs.

Moonlight is filtering through the window, making everything look bathed in silver. His cheek is pillowed against the inside of her right thigh, breath ghosting over her skin.

"What're you doing?" she murmurs.

"Couldn't sleep." He turns his head and mouths at her hip, making her shiver.

" _I_ was sleeping."

Oliver's head pops up. "Do you want to go back to sleep?"

Felicity sighs and runs a sleepy hand through her hair. "What day is it?"

"Saturday morning. Technically. It's almost two."

Oh thank god, that means she doesn't have to get up in three and a half hours to go run a fortune five hundred company.

Not that her life was ever normal but it feel exceptionally strange now, with Oliver Queen's hands prying her naked thighs apart to put his mouth on her.

It's actually kind of amazing.

He spreads her apart with one hand and whispers something in Russian before darting his tongue out to taste her.

She sighs in delight, the familiar coil in her belly tightening as he alternates swirling circles with broad strokes.

"That feels so good," she murmurs, reaching down with one hand to stroke the top of his head.

He latches around her clit and hums, and she laughs, rolling her hips as her spine tingles.

He pushes two fingers in and a moan slips past her lips. Felicity rolls her hips, loving the way he feels inside her, the way those long deft fingers know exactly how to make her fall apart.

"Oliver," she pants, feeling her cheeks begins to flush.

"So beautiful," he murmurs, planting kisses on her belly, tracing a wet line across her hips.

"Feels so good," she slurs. "Always so good with you."

"Felicity," he murmurs, in that soft tender voice he only uses with her.

He crooks his fingers and bends down to suckle her clit and she cries out, hips moving insistently.

"Come on baby," he whispers, and twists his fingers.

She comes hard, bowing off the bed as her hips grind frantically into his hand.

"Oh, God Oliver," she chokes out. "Fuck."

He crawls up her body and settles between her legs, pushing himself into her _slowly, slowly_.

She's sensitive and in that half-awake half-dream state so everything is sensation, the delicious fullness of him, the way he carefully cups the back of her head with his left hand.

"I read somewhere," she murmurs, shuddering as he hits a particularly deep spot, "orgasms can help with insomnia."

"Really?" Oliver nibbles at her industrial piercing and she gasps.

"Yeah," she says breathily, clenching around him. "Something about oxytocin."

"Wanna find out?"

There's a light in his eyes and no tension in his mouth. She loves him like this, playful and soft and peaceful.

" _Yes_."

God, does she want to find out, not that it matters. Asleep or awake, she loves him either way.

Because she is Felicity Smoak, and he's Oliver, her Oliver, and sometimes she loves him so much it scares her too. 

xxx 


End file.
